Defence seeks quantum comms research

The Department of Defence is looking for researchers to work on quantum communication technologies.

In a tender published earlier this month, the department said it’s seeking proposals from “industry, academia and government-funded organisations".

It will consider proposals for work on quantum-secured communication; quantum time transfer; quantum memories and repeaters; free-space quantum communications; quantum-enabled RF communications; and quantum-enhanced classical communications.

Some of these fields are already deployable: quantum technologies are in use as random number generators for classical encryption schemes, and quantum key distribution is a nascent product segment.

“Future quantum networks will be capable of transferring qubits across large distances and multiple nodes by using quantum repeaters based on quantum memories”, Defence said in the statement of work for the tender.

The project is being funded by Defence's next generation technologies fund (NGTF), which focuses on developing “sovereign capability”, so submissions will only be accepted from Australian and New Zealand applicants.

International collaboration will be considered “to avoid duplication or to gain access to world leading capability not available in Australia”.

The tender documents show that Defence expects the projects to take between one and three years, and fall within a budget of $500,000 to $800,000.

Previous projects in the NGTF’s quantum stream have focussed on quantum sensing, navigation, and timing. 

“Entangled pairs of photons can provide distributed timing information that is an order of magnitude better than that currently available through GPS,” Defence said.

“Overlaying the quantum timing process with quantum security protocols means that the timing signals cannot be spoofed, providing accurate and assured timing signals that are critical for precision navigation.”